


victory and nothing but it

by cosmoscorpse



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Consequences, Gen, Just gals bein pals, Not Season 2 Compliant, Roadtrip, canon divergence between seasons 1 & 2, did i mention the greymorality? i think i did but its worth mentioning again, greymorality, k page's sordid past is kept in the past but that doesnt mean its done with her, the things we do for love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 09:52:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11079144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: Karen’s fingers twitch, just a bit, and she feels herself edge closer to shattering. “It’s Hell’s Kitchen,” she says, spits, “People are always dying.”“Yes,” Claire says, “And he feels like he should be able to stop it.”





	victory and nothing but it

**Author's Note:**

> ive been sitting on this one for almost two years now and its not getting any more done than this. i figure its time to let it go; so go, be free
> 
> if you're wondering about the greymorality mentioned in the tags and/or further warnings for the content of this fic, please see the notes at the end

 

_“We have not touched the stars,_

_nor are we forgiven, which brings us back_

_to the hero’s shoulders and the_

_gentleness that comes,_

_not from the absence of violence,_

_but despite the abundance of it.”_

_— Richard Siken_

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn breaks somber and grey, and it’s the third time this month that Matt’s broken his collarbone. _Re_ -broken. His face is pale from blood loss, turned toward the cushions on his couch. He’s sleeping, finally, or faking it exceedingly well. 

Karen had caught the tail-end of the surgery, when she’d stumbled over at 3 AM, her ears still ringing from Foggy’s phone call, his _Karen, God, please just – just come over, okay? He’s asking for you. He’s asking for you_.

There’d been the rush of wind in the receiver. An echo of a hoarse, drawn out scream, and a woman shouting. Foggy’s breath, catching in his throat.

Yes, she’d said. Yes, of course she’d come.

She wonders if she regrets it now, while she traces the line of Matt’s arm, bound against his chest. Keeping his bones in place. The knife slipped between his ribs, three times, stitches dark against his skin. He’s thin, she wonders how she didn’t notice he was so thin.

“He’s Daredevil,” she says, her tongue wooden in her mouth, her hands made of lead in her lap. Foggy won’t look at her, and the nurse – Claire, in her bloody sweater – won’t look away.

Foggy’s lips press into a thin line, and he nods, a quick jerk of his chin. His hair falls into his eyes. 

Karen feels like she’s drowning. “He’s Daredevil,” she says again, and thinks, _a car hit me, I tripped, got mugged coming in to the office, they took my wallet, look, Karen, I’m fine, will you stop worrying?_ Found the wallet in the office’s trashcan three days later, three days before –

“He’s Daredevil,” Claire says, her eyes as steady as her hands. The blade had fractured, shattered while it was in his body, and she’d had to dig the pieces out. Out of the meat. The silver shards are sitting on a plate in the kitchen. She shrugs, runs her hands through her hair. “I’ve been lobbying to tell you since the second time this happened.”

“You deserved to know,” Foggy says in a faraway voice, “You deserved to know from the beginning, _God_ , Karen, I’m so – “

Karen stands up, startling him into silence. Claire watches her, and blood soaks through Matt’s bandages, a spattering of red on a field of white. 

He looks like a martyr, Karen thinks, and she thinks she should feel ill but instead she’s just exhausted. She stares and stares and watches the minute rise and fall of his chest and – when she looks away Foggy is staring at her and her hands are not shaking, her voice does not tremble.

She says, “I’ll be back. He doesn’t have anything but beer in his fridge.”

She leaves the room in a silence like a tomb, Foggy and Claire like islands, isolated from each other. Bound together, by –

It must have been bad, if they finally decided to let her in on the big goddamn secret. She’d known Foggy and Matt had been dancing around something for months now, and she’d got a hint that Claire was clued in on it too, when she’d met her, but she hadn’t expected, she couldn’t have expected – this. 

And that’s the first lie.

 

It must have been bad, really bad – and she _knows_ that it was, she _saw_ it: Matt, in so much pain he couldn’t even scream, just thrashing weakly, his jaw working up and down, and his hands reaching, reaching. Fingers twitching in time with the grind of bone when Foggy helped set his leg. 

But.

Claire had said, Foggy had said – _“This is the third time this month that he’s re-broken it.”_ She saw the scars, and she remembers all the times Matt lied to her and – 

But, even if this was the worst of it, her heart aches, her stomach turns to think about all the times it happened _before_ , and she didn’t know about it. Wasn’t there for it.

It’s no kindness.

 

She vomits in the alley outside his apartment building, spits until the taste in her mouth is just an acidic afterthought and then keeps walking.

 

7 AM, and she walks back into the apartment with a carrier tray full of coffee and a bag full of bagels. She sets it down on the table, sees Matt is still sleeping. Foggy and Claire have migrated to opposite sides of the room, resolutely not looking at each other, or Matt, or Karen.

She crosses her arms over her chest, clears her throat. Neither of them even twitch, so Karen inhales deeply through her nose. 

“I got food,” she says slowly and evenly, “So, you both are going to come over here and eat it and drink the coffee, and we’re going to talk about this.”

Claire is the first to move, turning away from the window with a stiffness that suggests an extreme weariness. Karen can feel it settling into her bones, too. Foggy rolls his shoulders, a loose shrug, and says, “I’m not really hungry.”

“Then you’ll come over here and fucking _pretend_ to eat,” she snaps, and is shocked, a little, at the severity in her voice. She presses her palms into her eyes, breathes, and then says quieter, “ _Please_ , Foggy.”

She’s still got her eyes closed, but she can hear his soft exhale, then the padding of his socked feet, and the gentle thud of him sitting in a chair at the table. She sits down then, too, and blinks. It’s going to rain, if the sky’s any indication. Claire is nibbling at a bagel, and she passes the coffee out among them. Karen nurses hers, holds it close to her chest and leeches the warmth into her fingers. She feels like she’s thawing, and it terrifies her. Glaciers crumbling. She bites down hard on the inside of her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Foggy shrugs, twiddling his fingers on the tabletop.

He says, “S’no big deal. You’re entitled to be pissed off. A lot, actually.”

“It’s been a long night for all of us,” Claire says, ripping open the bag and spreading the contents over the table. Foggy murmurs his agreement, and Karen sits frozen.

Claire drinks deep from her cup, rests her head on her hand, and flicks her eyes over the two of them. Karen doesn’t know what to think of her, even three months into being her sort-of-friend. Acquaintance. 

Claire casts her eyes up at the ceiling, “So, he’s a real jackass. Thought we’d just get that out of the way, first things first.”

Karen nods, and the statement startles a chuckle out of Foggy, who raises his cup in a salute.

“And yet, here we are,” he says, a smile on his face and no mirth in his voice, “Again, and again, and again.”

Karen blinks and tears into a bagel – it tastes like ash in her mouth, so she swallows and says, “You need to tell me how long this has been happening.”

Foggy blinks at her, runs a hand over his face. He says, “Well, he’s always been running around as Daredevil, so – a year, almost?”

Karen nods and sips at her coffee. She’s taken the lid off, and the steam curls into the air. “Yeah, I know that. But Daredevil isn’t always getting his ass handed to him. I do keep up with the news.”

Foggy and Claire share a glance, and she nods. “There was that first night, when Foggy found him,” she says, “Before Fisk,” she breaks off, her breath catching in her throat, “He almost died, that time. I think it scared him straight, a little. But then, a month later…”

Foggy’s hiding his face behind his hands, his words muffled by them. “And a month after that. Two months, then.”

Claire counting off on her fingers. Karen feels sick, again, but her hands – her hands are steady, fingers spread over the tabletop. _Three, five, ten._

Five times in the last two months alone make it an even fifteen.

Karen closes her eyes.

“Why does he do this?” she asks, when Claire is done, when Foggy is quiet.

Foggy’s voice is wrecked when he says, “He – it’s his guilt. Or, something like that, he feels like he has a duty to protect people. And he feels like he’s not doing it, and he’s tearing himself apart for that.”

Claire hums, says, “He’s letting himself get sloppy. It’s not about whether or not he _can_ win a fight- “

“He can, it’s just that it’s about whether he feels like he’s _earned_ it.”

“Yes.”

Karen feels like she’s drowning.

She drags an unwilling breath in. “How can he feel like he deserves – _this?_ ”

She saw the scars. She saw the scars. Foggy snorts, says, “He’s Catholic.” 

And Claire says, “People keep dying.”

Karen’s fingers twitch, just a bit, and she feels herself edge closer to shattering. “It’s Hell’s Kitchen,” she says, spits, “People are always dying.”

“Yes,” Claire says, “And he feels like he should be able to stop it.”

Karen shakes her head, her breath coming quick and uneven. They fall silent, sipping periodically at their coffees, listening to Matt’s rasping breath. Karen thinks, and Karen thinks, and she keeps looping back to the plate of metal shards on the counter, to the blood on the floor that she and Foggy spent an hour cleaning up, from five to six, to her hands, cracked and sore from the bleach, from holding Matt down while he screamed.

Matt, caught in the loop too, injury compounding injury compounding injury, blood begetting blood begetting blood.

She cracks her fingers, swallows, and says, “So, we get him out of the city.” 

Break the loop.

Claire’s brow furrows, Foggy sighs from behind his hand. “We can’t – he won’t ever make that decision,” Foggy says, and Karen worries at her lip. He continues, “If we give him the choice between the city and – he won’t do it.”

She’s silent for a moment, watching the light spill into the room. 

It’s a simple answer, really, and she breathes deep, says, “So we don’t give him the choice.”

They blink at her.

“What are you suggesting, exactly?” Foggy asks, leaning forward, his voice gone quiet and urgent. Karen swallows.

“I have a car,” she says, “I don’t use it much, because parking it is hell in the city, but. It’s a good size and it runs well. So, could you sedate him? Long enough for me to get him out of the city, at least. Executive decision, executed.”

The words feel like betrayal, wrapping up around her throat like fingers. Still, her eyes stay clear, her voice doesn’t shake, quiet as it is. Foggy stares at her like he’s seeing her for the first time, and Claire, she looks calculating, considering.

“ _Sedation?_ ” Foggy asks, his face twisting up. Karen meets his gaze and holds it. She smooths her skirt against her thigh. There’s blood on the hem.

“He needs to get away from the city, and he won’t allow himself to be taken away knowingly,” she says. It’s reasonable, and it’ll cause the least distress, she thinks. She hopes. A small, bitter part of her, the part that screams that she was _lied_ to, for _months_ , doesn’t care. Foggy’s face is twisted with horror, and her gut churns, and she leans forward over the table. Says, “Foggy, he’s not _well_ , and he’s never going to get better here.”

“She’s right,” Claire says. “If he stays here, he dies – tomorrow, in a month, I don’t know. But he will die.”

Her gaze is fixed on the floor, a minute crack in the tile.

“Jesus,” Foggy says. He sounds tired. He _looks_ tired, waxen and pale. Claire turns to Karen.

“Where were you planning on going, with him?” she asks. Karen’s mouth is dry – she licks her lips.

“Away,” she says, “Far away, probably. My family’s got land in Montana.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” says Foggy. Claire whistles long and low through her teeth. 

“And what are you going to do once you get him there?” she asks, her tone careful and lilting, “You’ll have gotten him out of the city, but he’ll still be – it’s not something you can fix, I think.”

She presses her lips together, “It’ll be a start, at least.”

Claire stares at her for a long moment, then sighs, nods, and says, “Okay.”

Karen breathes out, a knot of tension she didn’t know she was holding in her shoulders loosening. “So, you can sedate him?”

Claire doesn’t answer for a long minute. Foggy keeps his fingers pressed tightly against his cheeks, muttering a litany of curses. His eyes are screwed shut. Karen swallows, says again, “Claire, can you?”

Claire nods, her gaze vacant, calculating. “Yes,” she says, “Yeah, I can. One condition – I’m coming with you.”

Karen blinks. “Okay.”

“He’s still… it’s not that I don’t trust you, but you’re not trained for this. I am. I’ll take a couple weeks of vacation, and we’ll get this figured out.”

“Okay,” Karen says, relief flooding her veins at the prospect of not having to face – _this_ – alone, “Yes, that’s fine.”

“Are the two of you _hearing yourselves?_ You’re talking about,” Foggy says, his voice almost too loud. Karen winces, and he drops the volume, leaning forward over the table, “You’re talking about _sedating_ Matt, so that you can, essentially, _kidnap_ him. Are you kidding me?”

“Foggy,” Karen says, helpless, and Foggy draws a hand down in an abortive motion. He cards a hand through his hair, a panicked look on his face.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice tight and choked. On the couch, Matt groans and shifts and they all freeze for a moment before it becomes clear that he’s still – asleep. Unconscious. Karen’s barely keeping a lid on the part of her mind that wants to scream and scream and never stop. “Don’t.”

He points a finger at Claire, his jaw working up and down. “You, you’re supposed to be the reasonable one, here. What the _fuck_ do you think is going to happen, here?”

“Fuck you,” Claire snaps, her voice a razor’s edge. Karen draws back, shocked, and Foggy sits back, his mouth pressed into a thin white line, “I’m not going to sit back and let him _kill himself_.”

“You don’t know that,” he starts, frantic energy in his words, “You don’t know that, you don’t _know_ that, _goddammit--_ ”

He stands up and Karen lets out a short, hoarse shout. Covers her mouth with her hand, hisses, “ _Foggy_.”

Claire, when they look back at her, looks incredibly tired. Karen notices the blood flecked high on her cheekbone, under her fingernails, and, and she’s going to vomit. After this is done. Scrape herself raw.

Claire says, “Foggy, you’ve seen him. You’ve seen what he’s doing. If Jessica hadn’t dragged him back this time,” she covers her mouth with her hand. She’s shaking.

It’s silent for a long moment, tension coiled tight around the three of them, then: 

“He’d have died,” Foggy breathes, and sits down like his strings have been cut. His eyes are wet and trained on Matt’s prone body. The bloodstains in the floor, “Jesus, _God_.”

“He’s going to die here,” Karen says, her wooden voice filling the dead air. It’s the logical conclusion of the vicious cycle. Foggy makes an awful sound of protest.

“ _No_ ,” he chokes, his hand out and reaching before he can stop it. Karen sees it too – Matt: gone, gone, gone.

“So, you see,” Claire mutters, and Foggy drops his chin to his chest, sighs deeply, and then nods.

“Okay,” he says, “Okay. I’ll stay here, then.”

“Foggy,” Karen says. He gives her a small half smile, no real happiness in it.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll keep an eye on the practice. Sleep, maybe.”

Sleep. She feels like she’s not going to be getting much of that anytime soon. She shifts in her seat, wrings her hands in her lap, and says, “I’ll call you, keep you updated.” 

Foggy barks out a harsh laugh, waves a hand through the air around his head.

“Don’t worry about calling. Text me instead – actually, snapchat me. It’ll be good for us to pretend we’re hip young folks who are up with the times,” her lips quirk into a smile, and Foggy nudges at her, “Keep an eye on him, ‘kay?”

Karen nods, a lump tight in her throat. Claire stands up, crosses the room to check on Matt. The wrist of his good hands limp in her grip while she takes his pulse. Karen follows, watches the rise and fall of his chest, the subtle twitch of the muscles in his throat. Claire is silent for a moment, counting slowly, and then she nods.

“He’ll be out for a while,” she says, “Long enough for us both to go, grab what we’ll need, and meet back here.”

Karen nods. “An hour?”

She presses her lips together. “Forty-five minutes. Foggy, can you sit with him?”

Foggy, who has come up behind Karen, silent as a wraith, “Yeah, of course. Forty-five, you said?”

Claire nods – Karen nods. Foggy nods, and sits in the chair, resting his head on his hand, weariness in every line of his body.

Karen swallows past the lump in her throat, nods again, to herself. “Okay,” she whispers – doesn’t think she could be louder if she tried, “Let’s go.”

 

Four hours later they’re in a parking lot off the 280 somewhere in Pennsylvania and Karen is shaking, her eyes fixed on Matt’s prone figure in the rearview window. Claire stares out the window, her head leaning on the glass. 

Karen is shaking. She says, “He lied to me.”

Claire nods, says, “Yes.”

Karen breathes in sharply, through her nose, and lightly smacks a hand against the curve of the steering wheel. The radio spits static. She snarls, again, “He _lied_ to me.”

Anger and indignation rise hot and slick under her sternum. She knew this was coming – she didn’t know it was coming so quickly. Claire slides her sea glass eyes away from the bare tree shivering at the edge of the parking lot, pins her down with the gaze. 

Claire says, “I lied to you too,” and then turns her eyes away again.

Karen swallows, and her tongue is thick in her mouth, and she fixes her gaze on the same tree that Claire is staring at. The branches tremble. She does not say, _it wasn’t your truth to tell_. She does not say anything at all.

Three minutes later they’re back on the road. 

 

The road stretches out in front of them, a black ribbon unspooling under a steel grey sky. Trees grow crooked at the edges, suburbs springing up behind. Exits leading into open country. Rusting overpasses. The light fades slowly away, replaced with the milky orange glow of streetlights at dusk. 

Hours pass. They don’t stop, they don’t eat. Matt stirs occasionally in the back seat, soft whimpers that cut at Karen’s resolve. 

Hours pass. The day slides into the thick ink of night.

Claire says, “Let’s stop.”

Karen says, “Find a motel.”

Claire does.

 

The one she finds is a gritty, grimy place called Paradise set in the outskirts of a suburb in Indianapolis. Karen checks in at around 2 in the morning, when the only person in the office is a teenaged girl with smeared eyeliner and a scarred upper lip. The neon sign in the parking lot only spits a vicious blue, and the door to their room doesn’t lock properly, so Karen pushes the heavy armchair in front of it. She wishes she brought a gun, wishes she _had_ a gun to bring, if only to feel the weight of it in her hand, and is surprised at herself. Remembers – remembers. 

She bites the inside of her cheek until it bleeds raw, clasps her hands around the Gideon bible in the drawer of the side table until her hands stop shaking. Thirty dollars a night, two creaking twin beds. She and Claire manage to carry Matt in there and lay him out on the bed furthest from the door. 

Claire is out finding something for them to eat, and she’s alone with him and she can hear the heavy rasp of his breathing and she wonders _, if it stopped?_ If it stopped. She would be useless, if it stopped. He’d slip from them like oil on water. 

She swallows the blood in her mouth. Claire knocks on the door, and she moves the chair so she can get in. Claire says nothing except a quiet ‘hey,’ but she helps Karen push the chair back into position, and she sets a little paper bag on the rickety table. Then she goes over to Matt’s side, takes his pulse and checks on the swelling of his arm and leg. She slips a pill into his mouth and forces him to swallow it, then she sighs and leans back.

Rubs at her cheekbone, and says, “That will keep him under until morning. He’s healing alright.”

“He’s healing already?” Karen asks, and starts rifling through the bag Claire brought in. Three water bottles, an apple, a banana, and two travel bowls of cereal. No milk.

“Sorry,” Claire says when Karen sets the last two on the table, “I think all the milk they had was closer to being cheese than. You know. Milk.”

Karen shrugs. Food is food. “Does he always heal this quickly?”

Claire shakes her head, “Nah,” she says, “But then, _normally_ he’s not actually resting. He does heal fast, though. I’ve been assuming it’s the same thing that lets him ‘see.’ Do you want the banana or the apple?”

Karen chooses the apple. She eats it and the cereal quietly, and tries to wash the aftertaste out of her mouth with water. It all sits uneasy in her stomach.

Matt lays on the bed, boneless, and Claire takes his pulse again, arranges his limbs. Fusses. 

“What are we _doing_?” Karen breathes out into the quiet of the room. The fingers of her left hand tap anxiously on the cover of the bible. She wishes she was religious – thinks it’d be nice to have a god to speak to right about now. Claire meets her eyes from across the room – her face is blank. Karen asks again, “What are we doing?”

 

Early on the second day Karen stops the car somewhere in Wisconsin, calls Foggy and cries. It’s close to six thirty a.m., and he cries too. It’s good for them, releases something that’s been tangled up near their hearts. 

“I wish you’d come with us,” she says, leaning her forehead against the grimy window of the car. Static rushes through the speaker – Foggy sighs. He sniffles. She can see him rubbing angrily at his eyes, his cheeks turning red. 

“I couldn’t,” he says.

When he’s hung up Claire comes to stand next to Karen. She says, “I can’t keep him under like this. We’re going to have to wake him up today.”

Karen breathes out, tucks her phone back into a pocket. “Just a little longer,” she says.

 

The ribbon unspools, and the grey slate of the sky presses lower the further west they go. Karen drives and drives until her fingers ache from clutching the wheel and Claire makes her switch, and then she drives and drives until they stop to eat somewhere and check on Matt, who sleeps. It’s just sleep now – the sedatives are working their way out of his system. He’ll wake up soon, maybe within the hour. 

He’s going to hate them for this. 

Karen can’t bring herself to care.

 

Karen pays for a pack of stale gum and two coffees in a nameless gas station in a nowhere-kind-of-town in North Dakota. She hands the spare change over and she smiles at the clerk, a teenaged girl in a uniform two sizes too large for her. Karen’s hands shake, and she hides the trembling by gripping the coffee tight, scalding her fingertips. She holds the gum pressed between her arm and her body, and she pushes her careful way out of the door.

The bells on the door chime. She shivers, cold air on her knuckles, the back of her hand and her cheeks, hot cups in the curve of her palm.

Claire is leaning on the car, her legs crossed at the ankle and her arms folded over her chest. She’s got a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Karen can see her reflection, the grey sky behind her, in the dark of Claire’s eyes. A muscle in her jaw ticks, and her eyes flick down and to the side, liquid. 

Karen’s gaze follows the movement, and then she sighs.

She gives Claire the coffee.

 

And she goes to sit next to Matt, pulling the car door shut behind her. Their breath fogs in the chill air, his fingers rest on the windowpane and make little halos of condensation. 

He looks: smaller than he is, bruised. Starved and hungry. His jaw works up and down, like he’s chewing on words that can’t get past his back molars.

“You lied to me,” Karen says. There’s no venom in the statement - she’s as cold and slow as ice. Still, Matt twitches, like he’s flinching away from something unpleasant.

“Karen,” he says, finally, a little hiss of breath. It’s an acknowledgment, it might be something almost like an apology. She nods.

Karen asks, “Are you in pain?” because it’s a concern she has, distantly. Vaguely. She remembers picking fragments of a knife out of the meat of his side. _Are you in pain_? He’s been asleep for two days.

Matt’s head twitches in her direction, his eyes roving, empty. He swallows.

He says, “What have you done.”

She nods, and offers him a stick of gum.

 

“Can I have my glasses,” he says. He drags his fingers through the condensation on the window. She pulls them from an inner pocket of her coat and gives them to him.

They keep driving. Matt rests his head against the window. Claire flicks through the stations on the radio – more static than anything else. The miles tic up on the odometer and Karen’s hands clench tighter and tighter on the steering wheel. Her teeth grinding, glacial, before she catches herself and forces deliberate space between her back molars.

“Need me to drive?” Claire asks, her fingers warm where they rest near her knee. Karen swallows, clears her throat and flexes her hands on the wheel.

“No,” she says, “I’m fine.”

 

The leather of the booth squeaks and pops under her when she moves. It is six in the evening and it’s been dark for an hour, an inky blackness dripping outside the grim neon of the diner. There was dirty grey snow in the parking lot and Karen warms her fingers around a mug of coffee. Feels Claire bleeding heat at her side.

Matt sits across from them, his hands curled into loose fists on top of the table. Karen regards the set of his shoulders, the slightest ticking in his jaw. Claire flips intendedly through the menu, the laminated pages sticking to each other and making soft crackling noises when they part. 

“Where are we?” Matt asks, his voice a quiet, hoarse rasp. 

“Dakota,” Karen says, her gaze sliding over his face, over the window, over the three other people in the diner, hunched over their food. She doesn’t know what town they’re in, didn’t pay that much attention to the words on the exit sign. 

“ _North_ Dakota,” Claire murmurs her correction, nudging Karen gently with her elbow. Her eyes flick through the appetizers, “Are you hungry, Matt?”

“No,” he snaps. His fingers twitch, restless, before he deliberately steadies them. He keeps his injured arm still and close to his chest. Claire makes a soft noise, nods.

“Okay,” she says levelly, “That is some bullshit. Do you want fries or hashbrowns?”

He breathes sharply, tilts his head. Karen thinks he looks small in his sweater, like he’s curling in on himself. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, finally, in the smallest voice Karen’s ever heard from him, “It – I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. We need to go back.”

Karen holds her breath. Claire blinks once, and looks up at him, all liquid calm. 

“Why?” she asks, her voice honey-smooth and cold. He seems to feel the weight of her gaze and he shrinks under it, his breath hitching.

“I can’t be – I,” his jaw works up and down. 

“You are still very hurt,” Claire says, brokering no room for argument. She turns her attention back to the menu. “I’m thinking you’d like the hashbrowns more than fries. Maybe a fried egg, too?”

“Rest, Matt,” Karen says, her voice soft, barely above a whisper. “Recover.” 

Claire nods, makes a sound of assent. Matt’s face twists, a quick flash of emotion before it smooths over. He leans forward, the seat crackling with the movement. 

“People are _dying,_ ” he hisses, low and urgent, “I’m sure – you understand that, yeah?”

Karen inhales sharply, and she leans forward too. He draws back, the tiniest bit, and she thinks _good_. 

“That’s not on you,” she murmurs, her voice low and vicious, the vinyl of the table smooth under her table. He flinches again, more noticeably, and Karen breathes deeply, thinks _oh_. She closes her eyes.

“They need me,” he says, quiet and determined.

Claire sets the menu down. “We need you, too,” she says, and Karen opens her eyes in time to see Matt flinch again, his face naked and open, the bruises stark and dark against the column of his throat, on his bare knuckles.

Karen thinks, _oh._

Claire presses her arm against Karen’s side, quick and subtle and warm. Karen watches condensation bead on the glass of the window and drip down.

 

Karen’s hair hangs damp around her face, sticking to her neck. The water’s off but steam still hangs in the little bathroom, the pipes still clank. The towel she’s got wrapped around her chest is thin, and she shivers in it.

There’s a soft knock at the door, and she hums softly, an invitation. She breathes in. Claire slips inside, leaves the door cracked slightly open behind her.

“Hi,” she says, quiet. 

“Hi,” Karen says back, just as soft, crossing her arms awkwardly over her chest. “How is he?”

She flicks her eyes to the door; the room beyond. Karen can see a sliver of Matt’s leg stretched over the bed through the fog in the mirror.

“He’s pretending to sleep right now, but he’s healing,” Claire says, “The bones’re still setting, but I’ll be able to take the stitches out in two days, probably.”

“That’s quick,” Karen says, exhaling. They’ll be – not _home_ – but they’ll be where they’re going by then. The end of the line. Claire hums. “How are _you_?”

Claire presses her lips together, shakes her head. She shrugs. “I’m fine,” she says, “As fine as I can be. Why?”

Her face is tilted up, the weak yellow light above the mirror casting her face in dramatic shadow. Karen breathes, and feels her skin prickle into gooseflesh all over where it’s bared to the air. She rubs her thumb over the thin knit cloth of her towel, and she shakes her head. “No reason,” she breathes, “You’ve just been quiet, is all.”

Claire snorts, a little smile quirking up the corners of her lips. She uncrosses her arms, reaches out for Karen, brushing her knuckles gently against her bare wrist. “I am a _great_ conversationalist,” she says, her voice gaining a wry lilt, “And anyway it’s not like you’re one to talk: I’d kill to know what you’re thinking, once in a while.”

Karen tilts her head, huffs out a little laugh. “I’m an open book,” she says. 

 

“Green,” Claire says, her gaze steady and fixed on Karen, unblinking. Karen eases the car through a curve in the mountain road.

“What?” she asks, her voice a soft chirp. Matt’s still resolutely ignoring them in the backseat. He might be sleeping, he’s still enough for it. They keep their voices low.

“Green,” Claire says again, “It’s my favorite color.”

Karen’s silent for a minute, and so Claire continues, “We don’t really know anything about each other. It seemed unfair.”

Karen breathes out. Patches of blue sky shine through the clouds.

“Lilac,” she says, finally, “That’s mine.”

 

Gravel and frost crackle under the turn of the tires. The engine hums, and Karen’s breath feels stuck up in her lungs. Setting sunlight lances the dark underbelly of the clouds, and she can smell the pine needles in the dry heat pushing out through the vents. Claire is humming softly, and Matt is tapping his fingers against the window. 

The house is in front of her – the same silhouette, the same steep roof, the same dark trees all around it. Shadows slide down the mountain and pool around the trunks and the patches of snow there; in the dark, opaque windows. Karen looks at it, the house and everything around it, and she drinks it in. She swallows, and feels something slide into place in her chest, filling some kind of void.

Under the back porch there will be the firewood – still tarp covered and useable. She will need to start the stoves, she will need to make the beds, she will need to see what canned food is still in the pantry, if she will need to find time to go back down the mountain and up again for groceries. Outrun the storm. 

She turns the key in the ignition, and the silence sings in her ears. There’s nothing but the rush of blood in her veins – her world narrowed. She can feel Claire’s eyes on her.

“Karen,” Matt says, his voice rough and uncertain, “Are you…”

He trails off. Karen holds the keys so tightly she’s sure it will leave little red indentations in her palm. He must be hearing her heartbeat, she thinks. Or maybe he can hear her lungs, starting-stopping-starting again. Again. She swallows back her rising gorge and blinks back the damp in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she says. _Fine, fine –_ she thinks she’s fool enough that if she says it again, again it might become true. She swallows past the stone in her throat.

Claire reaches out, lays a hand on Karen’s arm. Her thumb rubs gentle circles on the crook of her elbow. She says, “Let’s go inside.”

Karen nods and throws open the car door, letting the cold air rush in. Claire follows, and then Matt.

 

They beat the dust out of the blankets; they light the fire in the stoves; and they take stock of the food left in the pantry. Karen is surprised to find the house better kept than she thought, surprised to find unexpired cans of food until she remembers the key she left with a woman down the mountain. Her promise to keep it up until she came back.

Karen hadn’t intended to ever come back. She’d said as much, and laughed. 

Still, she’d kept the key to the back door on her key ring. Still, she’d kept the deed to the house, and still, she’d sent money to the woman every other month.

Still.

 

Karen sits against a cabinet on the floor of her kitchen with a can of soup in her hand and she bites down hard on her lip and she is not sure if she is crying or laughing.

 

Dawn breaks ice-bright and cold over the mountainside. Karen sits on the porch of her childhood home with a blanket draped over her shoulders and a mug of warm coffee in her hand, and she looks out over the trees. The light catching and glittering and fracturing on the snow and the ice.

After some time, the door opens, closes, and Matt comes to sit next to her, moving carefully, mindful of his multitude of hurts. If she closes her eyes she can see the rows of black stitches on his skin – the bruises and the scrapes and breaks. She keeps her eyes open. Better to be blinded by the light than see that again. 

He says, eventually, “There’s a leak in the roof. The floor in one of the upstairs rooms is rotten.”

Karen’s lips twist into something like a grin. “Which one?” she asks.

“Claire says the wallpaper’s green,” Matt says. She raises an eyebrow, nods. 

“Stay out of it then,” Karen says. A gust of wind comes down the mountain, picking up a flurry of snow.

“What does it look like?” Matt asks, tilting his head toward her.

She shifts, sighs. Bites her lips and studies the back of her hands. “It’s very bright,” she says, “Clear day. What does it look like to you?”

Matt inhales sharply. He says, “It’s –”

He falls silent.

“It feels clean,” he says, finally, “And it’s quiet.”

 

Later - they go inside. They make coffee on the stove and drink it, the three of them sitting on the floor in the living room, sunlight spilling in bright, bright, bright from the wide bay window. 

And it’s quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> FURTHER CONTENT WARNING NOTES: aftermath of violence, as stated in the tags. nothing more graphic than whats presented in show canon. also, karen and claire drug matt in order to get him out of new york, which (they believe) must be done to save his life.
> 
> thank you for reading


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